If you are in marketing and sales, you will know that sales prospecting can be quite a fickle game. Often, conflicting information can make it quite challenging to determine the best method for outbound offers. In such cases, you may wonder – cold email vs. cold call? Yes, you can choose any of these methods, depending on your situation and/or preferences. There are pros and cons to both templates. However, the question remains – which is better?
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In this article, we will look into some points that can help you choose the right path based on your company goals and strategy.
What Is Cold Calling?
Let us start by understanding what is a cold call. Until the late 1980s, the rotary dial phone was an indispensable part of any household, and there was no call blocker technology or caller ID available at that time as well. These phones were quite bulky and could not be carried around in your pocket.
For a salesman, they could pick any number from a phone book blindly and make their sales pitch. The person on the receiving end of the phone may never have heard about the company nor understand what the products are being pitched to them.
This method is called cold calls. This process can be defined as an attempt made by a salesman to attract the potential client’s attention to the business through a phone call.
Often, cold calling has earned quite a bad reputation. For instance, it can interfere with your daily activities—we all know that today, it is straightforward to reach people at any place and time. Often, it can also get very annoying if you keep receiving more than five calls per day.
This type of phone call has been termed cold because you do not connect with the salesman or their company. Additionally, the sales specialists also do not have much information about you. The main goal of this call is to get you ‘warmed up’ to the subject of the conversation.
Today, however, cold calls are not as widely used as they were, and this is because potential clients are no longer anonymous today. It has become much easier to learn some facts about them, like preferences, location, sex, age, and more, via various social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.
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Therefore, companies have switched to ‘warm calling,’ a type of calling where the salesman gets in touch with an individual if they have expressed some degree of interest in the company’s services and/or products.
What Is Cold Email?
As you may have guessed by the name, cold email is similar to cold calling; the difference here is that you will get contacted by the salesman via an email. However, you also need to know that cold emails are not only used for sales – they can also be sent by various types of individuals, ranging from students and professors to jobseekers and marketers.
We have all come across some form of cold email. For instance, you could have received an email from a student asking for employment possibilities or internships. All these types of emails fall under the category of cold email.
Even though we use chat and instant messaging apps, you will always find various types of cold emails in your inbox.
What Are the Advantages Of Cold Calling?
Yes, there are still quite some benefits of cold calls. They include:
1. Leveraging Human Element
When compared to cold emails, cold call sales allow you to have a personal conversation with the prospect. You are talking to a human on the other end of the line; in this case, you have the chance to build a human rapport.
Cold calls will allow you to understand and know the prospect on a deeper level, thereby building a stronger relationship before you can close the deal.
2. Faster And More Effective
In the case of a cold email, you will not understand whether the lead is trying to get you interested in their product or service or simply trying to be polite. This is because you will never be able to read the tone of the email.
On the other hand, cold phone calls done by a skilled salesman are faster and more effective because they can pick up subtle cues about their prospects, which often leads to faster conversation.
3. Harder To Ignore
There is no doubt that telephone calls are harder to ignore than emails. In most cases, we tend to delete promotional emails from our inboxes rather than replying or reading the content.
However, it is much harder to ignore when you receive a phone call, even if you suspect it is spam.
What Are Some Advantages Of Cold Email?
Yes, even learning how to create cold emails does have some benefits. They include:
1. More Cost-Efficient
One of the best reasons to opt for cold emails for sales is because they are more cost-efficient than cold calls. You can basically find hundreds and thousands of emails for sending your message. There are various online tools, like SignalHire, available to automate the process of finding emails so that you can free your time for something else. Also, with the help of such tools, you can easily create a lead list that will be organic to cold emails.
Of course, you have the option to automate cold calls as well with some tools. However, they are not as cost-effective as cold emails.
2. Easier To Scale
Scaling cold emails is easier and faster than cold calls. If you need to start making new cold calls, you will have to hire new employees for your company and/or buy more equipment.
However, you simply need to tweak the number of emails in the email outreach software if you want to send more cold emails.
3. Automated Documentation
One of the reasons why many companies opt for cold emails is the automated documentation process. Everything taking place within the conversation will be logged.
While you do have the option to record all cold phone calls, the process of doing so is much easier with cold emails. This will make it simpler for sales analysts and sales specialists to trace the path of the conversation or even point out certain insights to boost the performance of your marketing strategy.
4. Option To Personalize The Emails
One of the best advantages of cold emails is that they can be presented in various ways. For instance, you can send a general email to non-subscribers and first-time visitors. On the other hand, you can constantly personalize the emails and write really intriguing subject lines for email subscribers. Studies show that it’s been found that personalized emails tend to generate more than 6x transactions.
What Should You Choose – Cold Call Or Email?
So, the question here is – should you opt for the cold call or email option? Overall, it is all about creating something valuable with your audience. Your goal is to make the connection with the prospect meaningful so that it can lead to real conversations. It should not be surprising that human interaction does work in sales. No one wants to talk to a bot, either by email or phone call.
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It is always better to make use of email and phone simultaneously so that you can convert the prospects into loyal customers. As you can see above, all these advantages of both cold phones and emails will prove to be the best for your company if you use them together. For instance, you can use emails to get in touch with the right people and then schedule a phone call.
Another recommended approach here is to eliminate the ‘cold’ factor from the email or call and only approach prospects that have shown interest in your business or company.
Choosing between the two options will entirely depend on your company’s business strategy. However, you need to understand that these tactics are put in place so that you can create a genuine connection with your prospects as a representative of your company. After all, it is your job to reach them and address their needs related to your products or services.
Final Thoughts
Overall, prospecting is often the most challenging aspect of a salesperson’s job, and they need to be strong enough to face rejection. When it comes to effective sales prospecting, both cold phone calls and emails are considered the best ways to connect with the audiences. However, it is equally crucial that you get done with your research and keep personalizing your strategies for each type of buyer.
